Study Tools

The Crucible

Arthur Miller

Character List

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

John Proctor

In a sense, The Crucible has the structure
of a classical tragedy, with John Proctor as the play’s tragic hero.
Honest, upright, and blunt-spoken, Proctor is a good man, but one
with a secret, fatal flaw. His lust for Abigail Williams led to
their affair (which occurs before the play begins), and created
Abigail’s jealousy of his wife, Elizabeth, which sets the entire
witch hysteria in motion. Once the trials begin, Proctor realizes
that he can stop Abigail’s rampage through Salem but only if he
confesses to his adultery. Such an admission would ruin his good
name, and Proctor is, above all, a proud man who places great emphasis
on his reputation. He eventually makes an attempt, through Mary
Warren’s testimony, to name Abigail as a fraud without revealing
the crucial information. When this attempt fails, he finally bursts
out with a confession, calling Abigail a “whore” and proclaiming
his guilt publicly. Only then does he realize that it is too late,
that matters have gone too far, and that not even the truth can
break the powerful frenzy that he has allowed Abigail to whip up.
Proctor’s confession succeeds only in leading to his arrest
and conviction as a witch, and though he lambastes the court and
its proceedings, he is also aware of his terrible role in allowing
this fervor to grow unchecked.

Proctor redeems himself and provides a final denunciation
of the witch trials in his final act. Offered the opportunity to
make a public confession of his guilt and live, he almost succumbs,
even signing a written confession. His immense pride and fear of
public opinion compelled him to withhold his adultery from the court,
but by the end of the play he is more concerned with his personal
integrity than his public reputation. He still wants to save his
name, but for personal and religious, rather than public, reasons.
Proctor’s refusal to provide a false confession is a true religious
and personal stand. Such a confession would dishonor his fellow
prisoners, who are brave enough to die as testimony to the truth.
Perhaps more relevantly, a false admission would also dishonor him,
staining not just his public reputation, but also his soul. By refusing
to give up his personal integrity Proctor implicitly proclaims his
conviction that such integrity will bring him to heaven. He goes
to the gallows redeemed for his earlier sins. As Elizabeth says
to end the play, responding to Hale’s plea that she convince Proctor
to publicly confess: “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take
it from him!”

Abigail Williams

Of the major characters, Abigail is the least complex.
She is clearly the villain of the play, more so than Parris or Danforth:
she tells lies, manipulates her friends and the entire town, and
eventually sends nineteen innocent people to their deaths. Throughout
the hysteria, Abigail’s motivations never seem more complex than
simple jealousy and a desire to have revenge on Elizabeth Proctor.
The language of the play is almost biblical, and Abigail seems like
a biblical character—a Jezebel figure, driven only by sexual desire
and a lust for power. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out a few
background details that, though they don’t mitigate Abigail’s guilt,
make her actions more understandable.

Abigail is an orphan and an unmarried girl; she thus occupies
a low rung on the Puritan Salem social ladder (the only people below her
are the slaves, like Tituba, and social outcasts). For young girls in
Salem, the minister and the other male adults are God’s earthly representatives,
their authority derived from on high. The trials, then, in which
the girls are allowed to act as though they have a direct connection
to God, empower the previously powerless Abigail. Once shunned and
scorned by the respectable townsfolk who had heard rumors of her
affair with John Proctor, Abigail now finds that she has clout,
and she takes full advantage of it. A mere accusation from one of
Abigail’s troop is enough to incarcerate and convict even the most
well-respected inhabitant of Salem. Whereas others once reproached
her for her adultery, she now has the opportunity to accuse them
of the worst sin of all: devil-worship.

Reverend Hale

John Hale, the intellectual, naïve witch-hunter, enters
the play in Act I when Parris summons him to examine his daughter,
Betty. In an extended commentary on Hale in Act I, Miller describes
him as “a tight-skinned, eager-eyed intellectual. This is a beloved
errand for him; on being called here to ascertain witchcraft he
has felt the pride of the specialist whose unique knowledge has
at last been publicly called for.” Hale enters in a flurry of activity,
carrying large books and projecting an air of great knowledge. In
the early going, he is the force behind the witch trials, probing
for confessions and encouraging people to testify. Over the course
of the play, however, he experiences a transformation, one more
remarkable than that of any other character. Listening to John Proctor
and Mary Warren, he becomes convinced that they, not Abigail, are
telling the truth. In the climactic scene in the court in Act III,
he throws his lot in with those opposing the witch trials. In tragic
fashion, his about-face comes too late—the trials are no longer
in his hands but rather in those of Danforth and the theocracy,
which has no interest in seeing its proceedings exposed as a sham.

The failure of his attempts to turn the tide renders the
once-confident Hale a broken man. As his belief in witchcraft falters,
so does his faith in the law. In Act IV, it is he who counsels the
accused witches to lie, to confess their supposed sins in order
to save their own lives. In his change of heart and subsequent despair,
Hale gains the audience’s sympathy but not its respect, since he
lacks the moral fiber of Rebecca Nurse or, as it turns out, John
Proctor. Although Hale recognizes the evil of the witch trials,
his response is not defiance but surrender. He insists that survival
is the highest good, even if it means accommodating oneself to injustice—something
that the truly heroic characters can never accept.